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500 Words: Chris Evans announces young winners

Stories by children
about the perils of reality TV judging, dementia and a bloodthirsty pig
are among the winners of this year's 500 Words.

Now in its sixth year, the BBC Radio 2 contest challenges under-13s to write a story about any fictional topic.
Winners
were announced on Chris Evans' breakfast show from the Globe Theatre,
with Julie Walters and Tom Hiddleston among the celebrity narrators.
This year had a record 123,436 entries, up from 2015's 120,436.
Evans
said: "Once again, the children of the UK have proved that they are
amazing wordsmiths. It's been such a treat to hear the finalists'
stories bought to life at the final by our very special guest narrators.
"Keep those imaginations flowing - I absolutely cannot wait for next year!"
The
Duchess of Cornwall, who is an honorary judge this year, presented the
winners' prizes at the London theatre. She was also one of the judges,
along with Malorie Blackman, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Charlie Higson and
Francesca Simon.
Here is the winners' list in full:

10-13 years category

5-9 years category

Gold: Evie Fowler (9) - Poor Pig's Revenge
Silver: Katie Denyer (9) - The Grannies who Flew to the Moon
Bronze: Fergus Gathorne-Hardy (8) - The Smoking Pipe
The other celebrity readers were Andy Serkis, Warwick Davis, Nick Jonas and Raleigh Ritchie.Image caption
Julie Walters read winning entry Poor Pig's Revenge
Charlie Higson said of Poor Pig's Revenge: "What I
love about this story is that it really shows how much kids love blood
and guts and all things gory, nasty and yucky.
"What starts out
looking like it's going to be a nice little goody-goody story about
vegetarianism soon turns into a hilarious horror story as the pig turns
the tables on the butcher."
Francesca Simon added that e-courtroom
was "brilliantly original", and said: "I loved the way Ned used the 500
Words format to write a tense story while commenting on our modern
craze for voting and judging."
The Sands of Time depicts the
impact of dementia, seen through the eyes of a dementia patient and her
granddaughter. Malorie Blackman said it was "poignant, heartfelt,
evocative and beautifully written".Image caption
Tom Hiddleston, the duchess and Evans have all been involved with the contest
The Grannies who Flew to the Moon is about Dirty
Gerty and Messy Bessy knitting parachutes, and Frank Cottrell Boyce
praised the "swaggering self-confidence" of the writing.
Smoking
Pipe was a "genuinely frightening ghost story" according to Simon. She
described it as a "time-slip story" which "deftly captures the smells
and sounds and spooky atmosphere of the Thames at night".
The
Great Cookie Quest was a comic tale, and Cottrell Boyce said: "When we
read this story out loud everyone was laughing. It's a story that
escalates from sneaking a biscuit to demolishing a house.
"Lots of people try to have a twist at the end of a 500 Words story and it hardly ever works, but Ben really pulled it off."

Use of 'refugee' tripled

As
part of the competition, organisers found that the Children's Word of
the year was refugee, after it appeared in hundreds of stories
submitted.
It found the usage of the word refugee had more than
tripled since last year, while Star Wars, Shakespeare, Tim Peake and
social media were some of the other most common themes.
Stories
featuring the word refugee were most frequently about the plight of
children the same age as the writers leaving home and undertaking
difficult journeys